POLITICS


Here we are the day before the official selection of our 44th or 45th president (depending on who wins). The phones are busy ringing with political solicitors, every website emplores you to "Vote Now!" Mail boxes are still being stuffed with useless papers, glossy and full of boisterous lines emboldened by money and an almost desperation to win. I know a lot of cold neighbors who are stocking up on flyers saying they will do more for their current life and the warmth of their stove for the coming winter, than either president's politics will ever do. 

Did you know that according to the NY Times, this year's Presidential Campaigns have spent $1.9 billion. According to Aid for Africa, sending a child to school costs less than $400 for an entire year; and feeding a child for a year costs even less. So this year's campaign expenditures could have educated 4,750,000 of the worlds children or fed nearly half a million of them.
It seems to me, like our priorities and perspectives are off.
Sometimes I feel like it’s not even about our country anymore, it’s just a popularity contest. 
Power.
I read somewhere last election year that more people voted for the finale of American Idol than voted in the 2008 presidential election. That’s just sad. 
     We are one of the biggest and most entitled first world countries in the world and we don't care enough to educate ourselves and vote for our next leader. 

I am not immune to this, I didn't vote last election, but because I was too young, not because I was uneducated or lazy. Early voting has begun this year and I have voted for the first time, and I have to say it was kinda thrilling, filling in the little black boxes with my thick ball point pen and handing in my mail in ballot. I even got the sticker. 
     Admittedly, I usually don't know what's going on in the mainstream news world, unless it makes it's way onto facebook, because I've always hated the news, slanted and depressing, unkind and bought as it so often is. It's easier to change the channel of the radio or tune in to a show about singing than to wade through the damn politics of a world fraught with corruption, death, money and power. 
I hate not knowing who or what to trust. I know I voted this year without all the knowledge I could have gotten. By a long shot, but I still gathered and read and I voted. and I am proud that I did.  

But the thing I find the saddest is the way politics drives people apart. 
Sometime in the last week, a friend of mine on facebook posted their disgust at the realization that one of their friends liked (on fb) Mitt Romney. Her disgust was so huge, she spoke of unfriending them and deeply questioned their sanity. This seemed uncalled for to me. Not that I personally like, support or agree with the republican party, I don't, and a lot of the things they say feel like their talkin crazy, but the fact that she couldn't see beyond her friends political viewpoint, because they didn’t believe the same things as her; seemed like deeply biased discrimination. 
Something I know she and I, both are voting against. 

I am not immune to this judgement and discrimination. I judge other people close to me on their political views. I feel off kilter when we don’t agree. 
I know that I love the core of them, no matter who they vote for, even if I feel undermined by their chosen political candidate, and much more comfortable in the folds of friends I know are voting for the same things I am. 
I want for there to be peace in the world, but sometimes it's a struggle for me to hold my own views and try not to let them get in the way of loving the people I do. 

But come on, it’s not 1953 any more, we have voices, especially as women. We should be able to use them, but with courage, not with belligerence.  I hope that we are not so blinded by what we see as the right way as to loose the love we have for real people in our real lives; exchanging that real life experience, for some righteous, star-blindness in view of our personal chosen champion of a presidential candidate.  


I live in a very small, strong community, the bumper stickers in the parking lot at the local library displays our wide and very decided groups of people. We have staunch republicans- decorating their cars with Obama -Obumer stickers and one that says I Love My Kids Too Much To Vote Democrat. We have Hondas and Volvos proudly decorated in Obama's blue and white crest and still others, peeling with age, that declair Ralph Nader their president of choice for 2000, or  bolder still, that government has no place in everyday life. 
     But the thing is, I find that no matter what party your voting for, you still want your kids home safe at night, you still want food on your table and work to be had for the people you love.  It doesn't matter which side you vote for. 
We're all scared of the same basic things, even if they take the faces of people we don't know, and we vote for. We are all clinging to the same things, and hoping for a better future.
We are the americans living out our days and our dreams, we are the citizens of this incredibly large country. This is our home.  


Who ever wins the presidential election, won't come to my house, or care about me, or come to my funeral, the way the people of my town will.

They, are my America. 



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